


you will find me (in places that we've never been)

by namgiluvr



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender, Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Clones, Dimension Travel, Feelings Realization, Friends to Lovers, M/M, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, POV Alternating, POV Third Person Limited, Parallel Universes, Soul Bond
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-11-18
Updated: 2020-11-18
Packaged: 2021-03-09 23:28:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,193
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27614162
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/namgiluvr/pseuds/namgiluvr
Summary: After living through so many battles and witnessing completely irrational things first hand, there's little to nothing that can startle a person. That is, until the universe places what seems to be an alternate version of you in your path.or,where keith and lance accidentally land on zuko and lance's reality, crash a festival, do some soul searching, and ultimately create chaos.
Relationships: Keith/Lance (Voltron), Sokka/Zuko (Avatar)
Comments: 5
Kudos: 66





	you will find me (in places that we've never been)

**Author's Note:**

> [taps mic] are these two pairs still a thing? 
> 
> after watching atla i realized zukka are the blueprint for klance so i was like yoooo imagine a crossover... idk if anyone has done one of these before but even if they have here's another one bc why not hehe :]
> 
> I'm really excited for this fic because i love these four idiots sm so getting to write about them together has me STOKED. also i originally planned for this to be a one shot but it would have taken me years to finish so i was like I'm doing it chaptered so i can feel the looming sensation of writing on deadline once again. so here we are.
> 
> psa i watched voltron back in 2018 and i dropped that mf before the last season even came out so i fr do not remember ANYTHING about the show so there's probs a lot of canon divergence please just completely erase whatever u know about the plot from ur mind that show was ass either way and 75% of its viewers were there for klance so it shouldn't even be hard
> 
> title is from walking in the wind by 1d lol 
> 
> with that said, hope you enjoy! :D

It was Lance’s fault, as per usual.

Well, not lately. Keith and Lance had recently put aside their signature antagonism in favor of team-playing in and out of battle, to the point where the rest of team Voltron considered it out of character. But _this_ , right now, was the work of a far more immature, old version of them. 

Keith does his best to brace the impact as Red crashes against the ground, taking down what looks like dozens of trees and rolling down a hill until she comes to a halt by a clear at the bottom. His head rings as he tries to regain his bearings, unstrapping the belts from his seat and falling to the ground in an attempt to get up. Keith crawls in all fours until he reaches the communicator and tries to contact the team.

“Guys, is anyone there? It’s Keith, I crashed down,” he blurts out. He stands up and leans against the controls, mentally assessing for any injuries. Aside from some dull pain in his arms and the ringing in his head, he seems to be in perfect condition. Red, however, cannot say the same. The controls flicker on and off, and Keith can feel her distinctive thrum of energy fade out as he attempts to call for help. “Can anyone hear me?”

The response comes in a loud crash coming from his left. Keith ducks below the control board, bracing for some impact against his lion, but after a few seconds of noise then silence he jumps up and looks through the glass. To his front and right there is nothing but grass, but a glance to his left provides Keith with the unmistakable sight of the blue lion sprawled out in the clearing.

“I am going to _kill_ him,” murmurs Keith, then exits Red.

He puts up his helmet in case they crashed on a planet with no oxygen, then runs the distance between Blue and Red until he stands in front of an opening hatch, Lance’s infuriating self stumbling out of Blue, helmet off and coughing.

“Are you _stupid_?! Put your damn helmet on!” screams Keith running over to Lance, catching him in his arms as the blue paladin falls down.

Lance coughs out once more. “I can breathe outside, man, but slamming against the seat almost took my lungs out.”

Keith rolls his eyes then unceremoniously drops Lance to the ground, who yelps out an ouch. He decidedly ignores Lance in favor of taking off his helmet and breathing in. He closes his eyes and starts counting. One, two, three, four. Breathe in. Five, six—

It’s not working.

“You’re such an _idiot!_ You could have killed all of us, damn it. What were you fucking thinking, breaking out Voltron like that?” Keith screams at Lance. The blue paladin winces, more in pain than from being scolded.

“Calm down, mullet, I didn’t do it on purpose. Whoever was attacking us was hijacking all of the lions at the same time, and we would have all been dead if we hadn’t separated, that way they lost their advantage over the entire team. What was I supposed to know we were going to be pushed into a wormhole? It wasn’t even there in the first place!”

Keith huffs. “Wormholes are kind of hard to miss.”

“Yeah, well, you missed it too, so what does that tell you.”

Keith chooses to ignore Lance and instead looks at their surroundings. They crashed in the middle of a forest, with nothing but trees around them. He strains his ears but doesn’t hear anything besides leaves ruffled by the breeze and Lance’s groans of pain. Keith sighs.

“Are you okay?”

Lance nods and stands up, dusting off his knee pads. “My back hurts like I just got smacked with a baseball bat, but other than that, peachy. You?”

“Just a minor headache.”

Lance clicks his mouth then nods at Red. “Is your girl doing anything? Mine kind of dipped when we crashed and I can’t get her up.”

Keith rolls his eyes once more. He’ll never get the way Lance addresses the lions.

“No; I tried to reach out to the team but no luck.”

Now it’s time for Lance to sigh. He takes a look at their surroundings then closes his eyes and puts his hands on his hips. Keith recognizes it as his “thinking pose” and leaves him alone, instead choosing to rub his temples in an attempt to get the dull ache to go away. He’s stranded in some other universe with Lance, with no way to communicate with their team, and their lions aren’t responding. Great.

“Okay, so, I propose we start scouting around,” says Lance. “Red and Blue are out, and I have a feeling they won’t get back up anytime soon, so it’s no use to just sit here and wait. If they do come back and we’re not here, it’s easier for them to find us.”

“Lance, they’re two gigantic space lions, it wouldn’t be that hard for _us_ to find _them_.”

“Shut up,” he spits. “Listen, we need to try and contact the rest of the team; maybe another one of them ended up here too, or we can find someone that can help us. Either way, it’s better than just sitting ducks here.”

Keith pretends to mull over their options, but he knows Lance is right. Their best bet is to explore around. With one last glance at Red, he sighs and motions for Lance to start walking. He bids goodbye to Blue and promises to come back for her, then heads in the direction from where they crashed.

They walk in silence and side by side, always wary of their surroundings. Despite being somewhat pissed, Keith is not about to throw away precautions just to get back at Lance. They are teammates before anything else, and Keith will not put either of their lives at risk. Lance, on the other hand, seems oddly sure of where he is going and takes turns around trees like he’s reading a map. 

“What are you doing?” asks Keith after Lance slides down a rock.

“There are footprints all over the place and skids on the trees that look as if they were made with fire; I’m just following them,” he replies pointing to a nearby tree. Keith squints and effectively, there are odd-looking skids across it.

“How can they be made by fire? They look like sword cuts to me.”

Lance shakes his head and keeps walking. He pushes aside some tree branches and Keith has to lean down so as to not get hit by them. Asshole. “Nah, if they were made by some type of blade the cut would have depth; those are superficial skids, kind of like when you run a hand across dust.”

Keith hums but doesn’t respond. He won’t admit it out loud, but the way Lance is able to assess things in the blink of an eye has always made him feel… something. Even during Garrison days, Lance had always been known for figuring out faults in a system before testing had even started, but Keith had never pondered much on that, simply acknowledging his skills in his head and moving on. Working together as part of team Voltron has made Keith appreciate Lance in a new way.

“Look, there,” murmurs Lance. He grabs Keith’s arm and moves both of them behind a tree, pressed against each other so they can’t be seen from the other side. Lance points somewhere with his chin and Keith follows suit.

Right where the trees end there is a dirt path that leads to some sort of gate, red and gold ribbons hanging from the polls and ending a few inches above the ground. Past those is some sort of brick road and the corner of what looks like a low building disappearing from the view. 

“A town?” asks Keith and Lance shrugs. “Would it be safe to go there?”

“Pretty sure we could fight our way through it if it wasn’t. Either way, we’re Paladins—I’m sure they’d recognize us.”

Keith doesn’t know about the recognizing part, but they are truly being perceived as they walk down the brick path of the town. He keeps walking behind Lance but he notices a few people staring at them as they move, eyes unblinking and unrestricted. They’re all human which, given the places Keith has ended up stranded at, was confusing for a second. Did they somehow make it back to Earth? There doesn’t seem to be anything new or unfamiliar about this place, instead looking like a regular town, if just a little old based on the building designs. The local fashion also looks like some sort of ancient clothing: robes, armbands, and Keith even spots some sort of chest-armor on a man that walks past them. 

“Lance, everyone is staring at us,” says Keith. As if to prove his words, two little girls that were previously running around a small fountain now sit on the ledge of it and stare at Keith and Lance like they—well, as if they came from another planet.

“They’re probably just shocked to see two Paladins of Voltron strolling through their town,” Lance replies dismissively.

Keith rolls his eyes. No matter how much time passes, Lance will simply never let go of the recognition and fame being a paladin brings. “Pretty sure it’s just because we’re wearing high-tech armor and they’ve probably never seen it before.”

“That, or they’re amazed by my unparalleled beauty.”

“You wish,” Keith weakly retorts but if he’s honest, he wouldn't put it past that. He thinks briefly of when he first truly noticed Lance and shakes his head. Objectively speaking, Lance is an attractive guy, he can admit that. Lance, with his sharp, round blue eyes and freckled cheeks—

“We should get more… appropriate attire. Maybe bringing that much attention to us when we’re stranded in an unknown planet isn’t such a good idea,” says Keith, effectively cutting off a ramble from his Lance-coded brain cell. 

Lance stops walking and turns to Keith. He looks around and notices a couple of people looking in their direction and sighs. “You’re right. Any idea where to even get clothes?”

Keith looks around and spots what looks like a tourist shop further down the road, some sort of tapestries and ribbons hanging outside the door. There’s a lady sitting by the window of the place and fumbling with something in her hands, but other than that it seems empty and inoffensive.

He’s about to drag Lance behind him before the blue paladin stops him. “Wait, you go look for clothes while I go try to get some information; cover more ground.”

“I don’t think it’s a good idea to go separate ways right this moment, Lance,” says Keith. Something about this place seems… _odd._

“Look, don’t worry about it. Where are you going?” Keith points to the tourist shop and Lance nods then points across the road. “Alright, I’m gonna be over by that booth there, and try to talk to some of the locals. Make use of my irresistible Lance charm,” he says winking at Keith. He, on the other hand, tries his best to _not_ let said charm get to him and instead rolls his eyes, attempting to look more exasperated than flustered. For Christ’s sake, you’d assume Keith would be used to Lance’s existence by now.

Keith mulls it over for a second before agreeing. “Okay, but meet back here in ten minutes.”

Lance simply gives him an enthusiastic “deal” and jogs off to the place where a group of people seems to be huddling over a table, apparently enthralled by something or someone. Keith doesn’t waste any time either and makes his way to the shop, taking care to notice that all buildings around them are closed or empty-looking. Did they land in some sort of ghost town?

Keith enters the tiny shop and scans the place. There is an _overwhelming_ amount of red around, even more than when his lion’s emergency controls are lit up in the cockpit. There are dozens upon dozens of items in what looks like flames designs, all decorated in shades of red and gold and even black. There’s a wall full of what he recognizes as typical tourist memorabilia: little postcards, statues, a calendar that says Caldera City. Keith giggles a bit—all the references to hot stuff reminds him of Arizona.

There are also clothes hanging around, though Keith would have preferred for some stereotypical tourist stuff instead of the robes that adorn the walls. He turns around and heads to where the lady sits, who seems to have not noticed his presence at all. 

“Hello, are these all the clothing items you have available?” Keith asks in a polite tone. Belatedly, he realizes he doesn’t even know if the woman could even understand him, and much less if he addressed her in the correct way. A small but aggressive encounter on another planet during one of Voltron’s normal check-ups let him know that etiquette and social codes changed vastly across places. 

The woman looks up from what she’s doing and takes a look at Keith, then gasps so loud she drops whatever she is holding, eyes wide and hands over her mouth. Great, he probably met a Voltron fanatic.

“Sorry, did I startle you?” asks Keith. He’s about to reach for his communicator, just in case he needs to translate, but the woman shakes her head and drops her hand.

“No, my apologies, I just—your appearance, it truly startled me.”

Keith is curious. His _appearance_? He thinks about his Galra mark. “The way I look?”

The lady smiles. A nice, welcoming smile, not mocking. “I did not see you come in, and when I took a first look at you, I genuinely thought a member of the royal family had walked into my shop. Really, you have an uncanny resemblance to the Firelord!”

Keith is so confused. Royal family? He’s met a few before, but _Firelord_? What is that?

“I’m afraid I don’t know who that is,” he admits. The woman frowns and leans back as if Keith had just told her the sky was purple.

“My boy, where have you been? Everyone knows the Firelord!” The woman puts a hand on her chest. “Are you from the Water tribes? Your clothing seems a bit uncomfortable and… icy.”

Keith takes a deep breath and tries his best not to laugh. He’s had people fawn over their suits and has heard enough commentary about them to last a lifetime, but he had never heard someone describe them as _icy_ out of all things. Is it because of the cyan accents?

“Uhm, no, not really,” Keith replies honestly.

The lady dismisses his comment then picks up what she had dropped before—some sort of rocks—and sits back by the window. “Well, you must be from somewhere far away to not know the Firelord! Though, I don’t think people have seen him much since the coronation years ago. Why, how much has he worked since then! There sure is a lot to fix from the war.”

Keith’s mind is racing. Coronation? War? He looks like some sort of king? Instead of asking more questions, he settles for saying a numb “that’s cool” and turns back to look at the clothes. He does _not_ want to wear a robe.

“Well, are you here for the festival?” asks the woman again.

“No, actually, I’m just passing by—”

“ _Keith!"_

He doesn’t think twice, just reacts to Lance’s voice like some sort of involuntary reaction. Keith drops everything and darts out the door in the search for Lance, looking to where the booth was before. The people there now distance themselves from the booth and seem to stare at _something_ , and Keith can hear someone calling a name in the background, but all he’s focused on is Lance. He begins to run across the road to reach the blue paladin but is suddenly tackled to the ground, his arms bracing for impact but instead rolling to a standing position. Keith doesn’t wait a second and darts for a nearby alley, reaching for his bayard and activating his sword the moment he enters the place. However, he doesn’t have time to attack before he’s being pushed against a wall, his now sword-bayard clattering to the floor and leaving Keith weaponless, his arms backed against the cold stone.

His attacker has a red-and-gold hood attached to a robe (seriously, what is it with the stupid robes and this place?) and Keith can’t see their face under it, but he notices the person bringing up some sort of bright orange dagger to his face. Keith glances at it and notices it is actually _fire_ , both from how it looks and the fact that he can feel the heat on his Galra mark.

“Dude, what the _fuck_?! Get off me, you’re gonna burn us both!” screams Keith. He lifts his leg and kicks the person on the groin, pushing them off when they double down and reaches for his sword, but apparently, he underestimated his opponent because they quickly grab it with their feet and point the blade at Keith’s throat.

The person speaks up first. “Who are you?”

“With the way you tackled me for no reason, I thought you might have a preconceived idea,” Keith scowls.

Apparently, sarcasm doesn’t sit well with his opponent. They take their hood off and jab the edge of the sword right under Keith’s chin. “I am Firelord Zuko, ruler of the Fire Nation, and you _will_ do as told. _Who are you_?”

But Keith doesn’t even bother answering. The man in front of him is, well, like looking in a mirror. He looks _exactly_ like Keith. Granted, instead of having a Galra mark he bears a scar on the left side of his face that covers his eye and the top of his cheek, his eyes are an unnerving shade of gold rather than purple, and his hair hangs loosely around his neck than in a mullet, but it is still unmistakably _Keith’s_ face.

The other man seems to realize this too if Keith can judge by the way his eyes open widely and the sword tilts downward just the slightest bit. Keith doesn’t waste a second and kicks the blade out of the man’s hand, catching it with both and raising it above his head in a sign of peace.

“Hey, hey, truce!” says Keith. His opponent has a hand out and there’s a literal ball of fire hanging on his fingertips, ready to be aimed at Keith’s face. “We can talk this out, look.” Keith proves his word by hiding the blade and making the bayard return to its natural state.

The man mulls on the offer for a second but ultimately makes the flame disappear out of thin air. _That_ is freaky as hell.

“How do you do that?” asks Keith before he can even register it.

The man—Zuko—frowns and looks genuinely confused at the question. Right, as if _Keith_ was the one holding fire in his hands. “How do I… firebend?”

“Yeah, that. Is it some sort of nano-technology in your hands?”

Zuko looks even more confused now, even looking at his own hands like they are something foreign. “I just— it’s _bending_. You’ve never seen a bender before?” 

Keith shakes his head. “I have no idea what you are talking about.”

“ _Who_ are you?” 

Right, introductions. “I’m Keith Kogane, red paladin of Voltron.” 

“The what of who or where?”

Keith blinks. “Uhm… Voltron? Defender of the universe? Ever heard about that.” Zuko shakes his head.

Keith pauses for a second and tries to connect the information he has. First, the lady at the shop told him he looks like the Firelord, and by the looks of it, she was entirely correct. The fact that he basically has a _clone_ shouldn’t be that much of a surprise given he has seen the stuff the Galra can do, but Zuko doesn’t seem to have any signs of Galra influence over him. Second, if Zuko truly is the head of an entire nation, he might have the power to help Keith and Lance get back home.

_Lance._

Before he says anything, Keith starts running past Zuko and promptly ignores the “hey!” and literal flame the Firelord sends his way and heads to where Lance was before. Keith pushes past some bodies until he stands in the middle of the half-circle they’ve created, silently watching two people. He recognizes Lance immediately even with his back to Keith, but he can’t see the other person being blocked by Lance’s body.

“Lance, what’s going on?” mutters Keith loud enough to be heard by the blue paladin, hand on his bayard.

Lance shifts slightly and glances behind him to take a good look at Keith, but by doing so he’s able to see the person Lance was blocking, and—

 _No fucking way_.

It’s Lance. Keith has Lance’s entire face ingrained in his brain deep enough to recognize him everywhere, and now there are two Lances in front of him. The new one wears some kind of sleeveless robe with a brown leather weapons belt on his waist, and his hair is shaved at the sides and tied back into a bun, but that’s where differences end. Lance and the new individual have exactly the same face. Same brown skin, same nose, same big, electric blue eyes that can be seen two miles away.

Keith tries to conjure up a sentence but his brain fails to provide anything but white noise. The sight of two Lances has simply rendered him speechless, and he has no idea how to come out of his shock. Luckily for him, a tap on his shoulder grounds him to reality and he twists around to look at who touched him.

It’s Zuko, hood over his head again. “Grab your friend quickly and run to the building with the upside-down half-moon wall, behind it you’ll see a latch on the floor— go down and wait for us.”

All Keith does is nod and run towards Lance, not bothering to weigh the odds of being set up by Zuko. From the looks of it, they are equally confused, therefore the chances of either looking for answers or brawling out are equal from both sides. Keith grabs Lance’s arm and drags him past the crowd at full speed. The people around them gasp once they notice Keith’s entrance in the scene and Lance curses out some questions, but he quickly falls behind Keith at the same pace, seeming to think that whatever he is up to is better to just follow.

Keith glances side to side in the search for the wall Zuko described to him. There are more booths standing by the sides of the road, and people are hanging red and gold decorations from various places around town. They almost crash against a cart full of cabbages, but Lance spots the impending accident first and pushes Keith out of the way, who slightly stumbles but is grateful for Lance’s ability to assess danger. The half-moon wall suddenly appears in their vision and Keith sprints towards it, Lance following suit.

He slows down just enough to smoothly hide behind the wall in search of the latch Zuko told him to look for. There’s only stone and dust, though, and what looks like moss growing from the wall.

Beside him, Lance tries to catch his breath. “What— why did you— huh?”

“Just hush and look for some sort of trapdoor,” orders Keith, peaking by the edge of the wall and looking out in case somebody decided to chase them. He hears Lance breathe heavily but follow suit, shuffling along the wall and knocking it. 

“Dude, there was this guy that looked _exactly_ like me back there— just, y’know, like some sort of hunter version of me. It was so creepy because people kept asking me if some _Avatar_ was in town? Weren’t those the big blue guys we saved from literal extinction some time ago? Do you think we landed back in their place again?”

Keith scowls. “Lance, please shut up and find the door.”

“As a matter of fact, I already did.”

Keith looks back and sees Lance holding up some sort of vase over a hole on the floor. It’s probably just a meter wide, enough for them to tightly fall down. He walks over and peeks down, trying to see as far as the sunlight lets him. It looks like some sort of tunnel.

“Do we go down?” asks Lance. 

Keith answers by going in, flexing his knees when his feet touch the ground to soften the impact. The tunnel goes to his right and left but both sides look equally dark and empty, so he motions for Lance to come down. He grabs the inner side of the door and slams it shut as he jumps, leaving them in complete darkness.

“You idiot! Now we can’t see anything!” shouts Keith. He hears Lance scuff then a touch on his arm. He’s about to swat his arm when the cyan accents of his suit slowly begin to light up like a glow-in-the-dark stick. 

“You forget we’re literal flashlights,” mocks Lance, his own suit coming to life. 

A rustle near their left startles both of them. Keith immediately stands in a fighting position, cursing inwardly the fact that he isn’t able to use his broadsword in such a tight space. Lance, however, is free to use his bayard, the energy shooter sitting on his hands in the blink of an eye and pointing towards the noise. Keith sees a light and hears rushed footsteps approaching them and braces for a fight. He’s about to order whoever it is to stop when he recognizes Zuko’s red robe and the flame hovering in his hands. 

Keith sighs. “How did you get down here?”

Zuko stops at a safe distance from Keith and Lance, then stares unabashedly at the blue paladin. His right eye opens widely and his left cheek twitches in surprise, but he answers Keith’s question. “We took another trapdoor since we guessed you wouldn’t have gone that far in the dark— the tunnels are designed for firebenders to use, so the only way to light the path is by firebending, though you seem to have… gotten around that.”

Lance, clearly confused, chimes in. “Wait— Keith, who’s this? And why is there a flame _literally on your hand?!_ ”

Before either Zuko or Keith can answer, another voice speaks up. It’s high-pitched and very similar to Lance’s. “Zuko, why are there two weird us-lookalikes in the tunnels?”

Keith watches as Zuko moves his hand slightly over to the source of the voice and notices the person speaking is the dude who looks like Lance. Of course he’d talk like him too.

“This is Keith Kogane, the…” Zuko pauses and turns to Keith. “What did you say you were?”

He scoffs. “Red paladin of Voltron; and this is Lance McClain, blue paladin.”

“‘Sup,” is all Lance says. He seems to be shocked at the sight of Zuko, his brain connecting the fact that he looks like Keith.

“Well, I don’t know where that is but anyhow, I’m Sokka of the Southern Water Tribe, and I’m guessing you already met Firelord Zuko,” says the Lance clone— Sokka.

Keith thinks about being tackled to the ground and his face almost being burned. “You could say that.” 

Zuko seems to have been thinking about the same thing because he cringes like the fire is finally starting to burn him. “Sorry about that, I thought your friend called you so you could help him hurt Sokka or something.”

That seems to break Lance out of his reverie. He returns his bayard to its normal state and shoots a hand towards Sokka. “ _Me_ hurt _him_? He was the one that sent a damn _boomerang_ my way! Like, who _still_ uses a boomerang these days?”

“Excuse _you_ , I’ll have you know I’ve won battles with my boomerang alone— ask Zuko, he knows that firsthand!” argues Sokka.

Keith huffs and takes a step to stand between Lance and Sokka’s line of sight. He does not care for petty arguments right now, but simply to get out of the tunnel, have some answers as to why they seem to have found alternate versions of themselves, and find a way to go back home. 

“We really don’t have time for this. Zuko, do you know how to get out of here?”

Zuko nods and points past Keith. “This path leads directly to the bottom of the kitchens in the palace. The cooks shouldn’t be there right now, so if we hurry we can make it through without anyone noticing us. After that we can…” he looks to Sokka, then Keith, then Lance. “Figure out what’s going on, I guess.”

Before Keith can step aside and let Zuko lead the way, Lance speaks up. “Hold on, how do we know we can trust you?” 

Sokka snorts but stops at the look Keith sends his way. “Sorry, it’s just— he was in this same situation years ago. Changing sides in war after chasing you around half the world and all that.” He waves a hand as if he had just said some light-hearted anecdote. “But seriously, I could ask you the same thing.”

“We literally do not even belong on this planet and we have no communication with our team, and even if we _were_ planning to do something against you, it’d be pointless since we lack absolutely everything, from weapons to knowledge about this place, therefore we pose little to no threat. Now can we _please_ get out of this damn tunnel?” explodes Keith. 

There’s only silence in response. He notices how the flame on Zuko’s hand flickers and dims a bit, him standing with his mouth open in surprise. Right, well, Keith didn’t think much about what he said. He’s just tired of standing in the middle of this dark tunnel and feeling lost. 

“Uhm…” Sokka points past Keith and Lance and leans towards Zuko. “Do you think we need to get Aang into this? He might be able to do something because, y’know, Avatar knowledge and all that.”

“Oh, so you guys _do_ know the giant blue guys? That’s great, because we know them too!” says Lance excitedly.

“Giant blue— no.” Zuko shakes his head and walks past Keith, finally starting to lead the way to the palace. “Listen, let’s get out of here just like Keith said, then we can sit down and begin figuring out what on Agni’s name is going on. Deal?”

Keith looks at Lance and notices he’s already staring back at Keith. A beat, then two. They both seem to be asking the same question. _Do we go, or do we fight?_

Whatever the answer is, they’ll do it together either way.

“Lead the way,” says Keith, then he follows the flame.

**Author's Note:**

> WHOOP WHOOP hope you liked this first chapter!!!! in case the beginning notes didn't show it i like talking a lot so pls consider writing out your thoughts in the comments hehe it makes me happy :]
> 
> while the next chapter bakes in the oven you are always more than welcome to check out my other works or if you just wanna vibe with me u can find me on twitter at @rkivetect! 
> 
> stay safe and healthy! <3


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